fairy tale

The moonless night drawls on
 long after the last sweepings
 the unseen owl makes of treetops
 have drowned in the emptying
 reaches of the blind and icy wind.
 I speak in blunt whispers to
 the mirror of window glass,
 my gray breath clasping at your name.

 It is an age old story,
 its big feet trample the gardens
 that stretch between home and
 forest, between the scent
 wet wood leaves a fire and
 the warm pause of water
 trickling down your belly.
 This tale wanders between
 the dark insistence that stitches
 constellations out of the stellar
 dot-to-dot and
 the salty triumph of that first summer’s kiss:
 the metronome of reach and grasp.

 Wide awake, the new dawn
 crawls bitter like chocolate
 before my circled eyes.
 A single crow chokes on
 the remnants of the night
 birthed in its hollow throat,
 singing like a knife.
 My words spider like dead maps,
 full of mermaids and monsters, and
 you are a nation out of myth
 now sunken, blue beneath the sea.